Wednesday, July 16, 2008

Book 2, Reimagined Art: Another Roadside Attraction by Tom Robbins

So, as you may have seen in the last Another Roadside Attraction post, I had a lot of elements I could have worked with for this cover. I eventually came to the conclusion that I needed to keep it very simple and create a design that would jump out at you from across the bookstore. So, the two elements I chose to focus on were... hot dogs and Jesus. Didn't expect that now did you?

A little back story: The book is about a hippy couple, John Paul and Amanda, who open up a hot dog stand along the highway in Washington State named "Captain Kendrick's Memorial Hot Dog Wildlife Preserve". At the same time, through a series of misadventures, their friend Plucky Purcell gets wrapped up in a militant Catholic secret society and comes into possession of the corpse of Jesus Christ... which he steals and brings back to the roadside attraction.

So, in honor of Captain Kendrick's, I started off with a basic picture of a hot dog which I myself took and then ate (the hot dog, not the picture).

Then I imported this picture with an older painting of Jesus on the cross into Adobe Illustrator.

I traced both photos with VERY bright colors, cleaned them up a bit and removed elements. To top it all off and to make the site a little more sacrilegious, Jesus is now nailed to a giant hot dog.

Throw in a radial gradient background and some wispy, neon-like type and we have a very bright, very offensive cover:

Keep in mind, this is my very first cover exclusively using Adobe Illustrator (so be kind). The floor is now open for comments, questions, suggestions, and critiques.